LG Chairman Koo Kwang-mo Starts the New Year Early... "Let's Create Valuable Customer Experiences"

LG Chairman Koo Kwang-mo (sixth from the left) stands alongside employees in a digital video released on the 20th. (Photo by LG)

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] Koo Kwang-mo, Chairman of LG Group, presented a vision with an early New Year's message ten days before the new year, urging to "create a ‘valuable customer experience’ that is hard to return from once experienced." In his fifth year since taking office, Chairman Koo, who has been concretizing customer value management through annual New Year's messages, is solidifying his unique style after completing personnel and organizational restructuring across all affiliates.

On the 20th, Chairman Koo sent an email titled "Hello, this is Koo Kwang-mo," a digital video containing his New Year's message, to LG employees worldwide. While corporate leaders typically deliver New Year's messages at the beginning of the year, this year Chairman Koo unusually issued an early message at the end of the year to encourage members to calmly prepare for the coming year. It is expected that this approach will continue going forward.

Chairman Koo stated, "Until now, LG has focused on making high-quality products, but nowadays customers expect more than that. Customers are moved not by the products or services themselves but by the valuable moments they directly experience." He added, "The value customers feel is created when their experience before and after use changes, when they feel something they have never experienced before," emphasizing, "What we must deliver to customers is precisely this kind of ‘valuable customer experience.’"

As a starting point for valuable customer experiences, Chairman Koo proposed ▲ viewing customers not as buyers but as users and designing experiences that can impress by examining every stage of the journey using LG’s products and services ▲ forming relationships that allow deeper understanding and communication with customers ▲ continuously upgrading products and services to provide new experiences.

In conclusion, Chairman Koo said, "It is important to continuously create user experiences that move customers. Our thinking and working methods must also innovate accordingly," promising to build an LG where employees devoted to customer experience innovation are properly recognized.

Since his inauguration, Chairman Koo has continuously specified the message of customer value management, starting with his first New Year's message in 2019, stating "The direction LG should take is the customer." After defining ‘LG’s unique customer value’ in 2019, he urged focusing on customers’ ‘pain points’ (points where customers feel inconvenience) as the starting point for practicing customer value last year, and earlier this year emphasized focusing on deeper understanding and empathy with customers through micro-segmentation.